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This is a guest essay written by Sheri Oz of Israel Diaries.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
From the time of the 1990s Oslo Accords, we have a new People — the Palestinian Arab People.
While many pro-Israel people deny the existence of such, I have come to accept it.
Even though, in the 1980s, then-Arab Member of Knesset (Israel’s legislature) Azmi Bishara, for one, said there is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab People:
“I do not think there is such a thing as a Palestinian nation. I think there is an Arab nation. I always felt that way and I did not change my mind. I do not think there is a Palestinian nation. It is a colonialist invention — Palestinian nation. When were there any Palestinians? Where did they come from? I think there is an Arab nation.”
The contemporary divisions of nations and countries is a modern invention. It was always a very fluid phenomenon and probably will remain relatively fluid for the foreseeable future. Not one country can claim to exist in the same form throughout all of human history, recorded or otherwise.
Innumerable examples can be given for belligerent modification of national boundaries and division of larger countries into smaller independent states along ethnic lines, such as the former Yugoslavia. In this case, the international borders external to the former Yugoslavia remained unchanged through all of this.
Even more interesting is the fact that, throughout history, peoples have arisen and peoples have disappeared. Keep that little point in mind.
When I examine what has happened in the Middle East, I see a land marked by waves of migrations into and out of the area depending on droughts, productive growing seasons, and desire for control over routes between Europe and Asia in both directions. Imperialists and colonialists came from Greece, Rome, and Saudi Arabia — all set on conquering and gaining power, influence, riches far from their lands of origin.
The latest conquest, the Arab Conquest in the 600s to 700s, led to many indigenous tribal peoples across the Middle East and North Africa being forced to convert to Islam, thereby losing their vibrant and unique spiritualities and traditions, and in some cases their languages. Those who now call themselves Palestinians were either part of the colonizing Arabs or they were forced converts from Judaism and Christianity who became interwoven seamlessly within the fabric of Arab conqueror-colonial society.
In the first half of the last century, nationalism was an unacceptable Christian European implant into this region, and pan-Islamic identity was the more pervasive attitude. With time, national identities grew and Muslims began to acknowledge the borders and the new country names that defined them.
Cynical Use of the Name ‘Palestine’
By calling their mandated territory “Palestine,” Britain simply used the name given to this area by the Romans, who themselves adopted the Greek term for the Philistines (an Aegean people who settled along the southern coast and who were sworn enemies of the Jews) in order to separate the land from any association with its Jewish history.
And now, history repeats itself: If the Palestinians are supposedly the Arabs, then this facilitates the promotion of the hateful lie that Israel stole this land from its supposedly rightful indigenous population and has no claim to sovereignty.
Like many other Israelis, I personally know Palestinian Jews who can trace their history on the Land of Israel back hundreds of years. And, in fact, the name “Palestinians” originally referred mainly to the Jews here.
Strangely, to be recognized by the UN as “Palestinian” refugees, they only needed to have been resident in Mandatory (British-era) Palestine from 1946. That does not seem to imply any faith in the myth of their having had any long-term indigenous status.
Even if the Arabs in this region never before considered themselves a nation separate from the pan-Arab nation, it has little salience to the resolution of our conflict today because they now do. Those who fled from the land in 1948 were kept apart, not (re)absorbed into any other Arab nation — in Lebanon, for example, they were/are forced to live in refugee camps, not allowed to study in universities or work in professions.
Similarly, in Jordan, Gazan refugees were never given citizenship and many other Palestinian citizens are finding their citizenship randomly revoked without warning. In any case, Palestinian Jordanians need not apply for jobs in government or the military; they will not be accepted.
The name “Palestinian” has come to be fallaciously associated with Arabs. This deceit cements the contemptuous rewriting of history of which we Jews are only too familiar (for example, Holocaust denial and now October 7th denial).
I propose that one major obstacle to a peaceful resolution to the conflict lies in the lie of calling the Arabs “Palestinians.”
Furthermore, I believe that at some time there will be those who ask why proud Arabs chose a name that stands for defeat and elimination from the land (i.e. the ancient Philistines). I have, in fact, asked this question of some Palestinian Arabs and I am still waiting for an answer.
I am afraid that by allowing themselves to be called “The” Palestinians, they are basing their growing national identity on nothing more than:
Rejection of and hatred toward the Jews; and
Exploitation by other Arabs who used them as pawns in their war against the Jews
Rather than a name that celebrates their own culture, whether this distinguishes them from Arabs in other countries or not, they have adopted a name that represents victimhood. And they seem to be living up to that name most admirably.
If this comprises their defining experience as a new people, will they ever really feel free to make peace with their Israeli neighbors? Furthermore, is this a healthy basis for the foundation of a proud new nation? How will they justify this when they teach their school children about their history decades into the future?
To build the kind of society that their kids deserve, those who now call themselves Palestinians must be able to imagine a prosperous society in which education, good jobs, and raising healthy children are their dreams. Such dreams will appear when adults stop seeing in their mind’s eye only the ashes of the society they seek to destroy.
If, God forbid, the Arabs did succeed in destroying Israel, what would remain of the Palestinian identity that coalesced around the idea of destroying the Jewish state?
Without Israel, would the Palestinian Authority turn into the “State of Palestine” they try to convince the world already exists? In other words, would it persist as a distinct political unit? Or would it merge with Syria, since they have always claimed to be the southern part of that country? Or would the neighbouring states Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan each take bites out of the land and either peacefully or in war divvy it up among them?
In other words, would the demise of Israel mean the demise of “Palestine”? What would pro-Palestinians on foreign campuses and in the streets of the Western world do then for entertainment? I really want to know. (But I don’t want Israel to disappear in order to find out.)
Whenever anyone discusses “the Palestinians” you will always get responses saying there is no such thing; they are a fiction created only to destroy Israel. As if, by saying that, the problem with those who now call themselves Palestinians is soundly taken care of.
That’s it! They are dismissed. All gone!
But all that gets us is a “yes, we are” / ”no, you are not” — argument which goes nowhere.
So let us take another track.
Just like we Jews do not allow non-Jews to define us, I will not tell these people who now call themselves Palestinians what they are and who they are. But their stance in defining themselves as “the Palestinian people” has consequences for them.
First, let us remember that throughout history peoples have arisen and peoples have disappeared. Where are the Hittites? Where are the Edomites? Where are the Incas? And there are so many more that have come and gone.
We learn about the cultures of those who disappeared by what they left behind to be discovered by archaeologists: city ruins, temples, coins, sculptures, writing on walls of caves or clay tablets or papyrus. Anything that could survive the ravages of time and the elements. Therefore, there were probably other peoples who disappeared without a trace because they apparently created nothing that could leave a trace.
Are the Palestinians another “people” who will come and go in march of history? Will they occupy a page or perhaps a chapter in a future book of the history of the Middle East? If so, what evidence of their presence will they leave behind?
Or will they do something so remarkably uncharacteristic that it will ensure that they emboss themselves permanently on the land and in history?
It is totally up to them.
So let us say that the Palestinians are a people.
It is true that they do not have a distinct language. They speak Arabic. But then, Jordanians, Lebanese, Egyptians, Iraqis all speak Arabic and are, today, distinct peoples with their own characteristics.
One could easily point out that before 1946, there was no Jordanian People. So the fact is irrelevant that the Palestinians may have existed as a people from 1948, 1964 (when the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded), 1967 (to be generous), or 1993 (to be more realistic). What is relevant is how they conduct themselves as a people.
“What have the Palestinians created (except for suicide bombers)?” you might ask.
I have watched Palestinian, Lebanese, and Jordanian films. For this essay, I looked up websites describing works of fiction and works of art produced by Palestinians.
The Palestinian films, novels, and works of art are almost, if not totally, exclusively related to the “Nakba” of 1948, so-called “Israeli occupation” since 1967, Israeli security checkpoints, so-called Israeli oppression, and arrests. One can say that bashing Israel seems to be the one and only point behind their works of art and anything else — romance, family relations, careers — are only the backdrop against which to bash Israel.
According to lists I find on the Internet for films and novels from other Arab countries, there are, of course, those that concern the conflict with Israel — but most do not. And those that do relate to Israel seem to put the subject into wider regional and historical contexts.
One can hardly say that they hate us any less than the Palestinians, but they do not define themselves with respect to us. They have much to write about, much to represent in artwork that is unrelated to their relations with the Jews and Israel.
And when Syrian civil war films dealt with romance, for example, the romance was foreground and the war background.
So the question remains: Can Palestinians move beyond their core experience and define themselves in terms of uniqueness and not in terms of anti-Israel-ness?
If the definition of their peoplehood is destruction of the Jewish state, well, good luck to them. If they allow themselves to be called by the name of a people who no longer exist and who were eliminated off the face of the earth — the Philistines — well, maybe that is their destiny as well. Not my concern. But it should be theirs.
I want to change the conversation from just saying there is no such thing as Palestinians to discussing the choice before them, something like:
Okay, you are a Palestinian people (with a humiliating name and thus far with the sole goal of killing Jews). This means that you will be constantly at war against Israel because such a self-definition of peoplehood leaves no room for negotiation with us.
You can choose to continue trying to kill us off, or you can choose to do something radically different: You can choose to put aside the goal of getting rid of us and decide you prefer to offer your children a life that does not set martyrdom as a highest goal.
Your choice: oblivion or life. Reach an agreement with us that we can all live with, or go back to the Arab states from whence many of you came, or convince them to absorb you as citizens — where you can live full lives. Or risk dying fighting us.
I want to get out of the habit of letting them get away with being our victims which arguing over “Palestinians: yes/no” perpetuates.
I want to see them with agency to self-define and to choose what kind of people they want to be — or if they prefer the chance of not being at all.
We (Israelis) are not responsible for their choices. We are only responsible for how we respond to their behaviors.
Choose well, Palestinians. Your children and grandchildren depend on you.
Unfortunately, I do not expect them to take the rational, the life-saving route. I expect them to stay as they are, with their identity built on their wish to kill us. This may ensure that they join the dustbin of history along with other peoples who have been and gone.
In that case, does it matter what they call themselves? Does it matter when their peoplehood first came into being?
Nope.
So let’s just focus on fighting the evil and not arguing with them over things that really will not change the course of history.
Commendable as it is that you accept the Palestinians, (and that you are still free to say so) that is kind of irrelevant in the bigger picture. The hatred, abuse and violence comes from the Palestinians. That is their choice. They never liked or accepted any peace offerings by Israelis and/ or Others alike because they are steadfast on the annihilation of Israel. Israel believes their rhetoric which is supported by their actions. A lesson we should all learn about politicians: It’s Not What They Say, It Is What They Do. Watch them in Silent-Mode.
Excellent article. The humiliating name of Palestinians is very insightful. A name is so very meaningful.